Ann Voskamp is offering a free Jesse Tree Devotional ebook and free printable Jesse Tree ornaments to hang on your tree.
When You Rise created some printable verses you can laminate and put around your home to help you focus your mind on Jesus this Christmas.
Mandi is offering a free printable Advent Chain as a fun way to count down to Christmas.
Print Candee is offering a free printable Jesse Tree Kit.
Jessica from LifeAsMOM is offering a free Christmas Countdown download.
The Prudent Pantry shares how to make a Christmas Book Advent Calendar. Teaching Good Eaters shares how they are incorporating the Christmas Book Basket Advent Calendar idea in their home.
We’re doing our own variation of this idea this year. I’ll be sharing more about that sometime in the next week or so, along with some of our family’s favorite Christmas books.
Confessions of a Homeschooler shows you how to make Advent Activity Ornaments. Her post includes free printables and a list of activity ideas.
We’re also doing a variation of this: we made a list of all the activities we wanted to do this Christmas season (each family member got to pick 3-4) and then we assigned each activity to a day in December. We may not end up doing every single thing on the list, but having it all planned out ahead of time is definitely going to guarantee that we do a number of fun, meaningful, and memorable family activities this Christmas.
Looking for a really simple Advent Calendar idea? Jessica shows you how to make your own Advent Calendars from packs of gum.
How is your family seeking to make Advent meaningful? I’d love to hear your ideas!
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{ 22 comments... read them below or add one }
We read an Advent book. There are 3 in the series and they are set back in the time of Christ’s birth. Usually it has a child for a character and they go through the everyday parts of life leading up to discovering Christ’s birth. There is lots of adventure, suspense and drama. They are very captivating and you must hide the book or they will try to read ahead
The books in the series can be read in any order. Jotham’s Journey, Bartholomew’s Passage, Tabitha’s Travels. The author is Arnold Ytreeide. It will become a family favorite!!
Oh, thanks Beth! We’ve got a couple of used bookstores in town here, I’m going to go try and find those!
My family does those too ! They are wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have a Christmas Jar. It contains slips of paper with different activities (make paper snowflakes, fill a box with food to give away, read a Christmas story together, act out the birth of Christ, put on pjs and drive around to see the Christmas lights, etc.) We draw one every night after dinner and do it! Great family time and one of my favorite parts of the season.
We are doing random acts of Christmas kindness this Advent. I got this idea here:
http://tsjphotography.com/blog/random-acts-of-christmas-kindness-summary/
via pintrest. She also has the printables here:
http://tsjphotography.com/blog/rack-download-edition/
at this link she also has her version of using Christmas books and Bible verses along with a list of the Scripture she used.
We are on Day 4 of RACK and having so much fun blessing people!
We are going to do this too! I can’t wait.
We made and Advent Calendar Chain!
http://allthingskaty.blogspot.com/2011/11/counting-down-days-til-christmas.html
Thanks so much for sharing my link Crystal! I’m going to add a link-back to this post
We’re doing an activity advent based on the concept of being part of a “village”. Some of the activities help us stay close together during the chaos of the season and some of the activities are more random acts of kindness for us to do out in our “village”. Here’s a link to it! http://www.aturtleslifeforme.com/2011/11/it-takes-village-advent.html
SO glad you shared these! I did some online research yesterday to look for activities to do with the kids while we read from our devotion book, I LOVE the ones you posted. The only one I found and thought it would be great to do (and I searched over an hour) was from this site-
http://www.loyolapress.com/creating-an-advent-tree-of-kindness.htm
Our family and our church is doing a devotional series called Illuminate for Advent. We use the ornaments from Ann Voscamp’s devotional and hang them on our Jesse Tree. We also have a quilted Advent calendar.
In years past we have dearly loved Arnold Ytreeide’s Advent Triology books and plan on starting the cycle again next year. Each night you read part of the story- a cliffhanger ending each night leaving everyone eagerly anticipating the next night’s story all the way to its culmination on Christmas day. LOVE IT!
Thanks for these wonderful links!
This the second year our family will be doing our December Advent Countdown Box. It helps this disorganized mama stay on track. I just posted about it here:
http://amyswandering.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/december-advent-countdown-box-2/
Thanks so much for linking to me and for all of the other great resources!!
Erica @ www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com
We are doing Anne Voskamps’ Jesse Tree this year which is the first time we have done the Jesse tree. We have an advent wreath on our table we light at dinner each night and I wrap 25 Christmas books and put them in a basket by the fireplace and we choose one to unwrap and read each night. Some are religious and some are just for fun like Mooseltoe. We also read “One Wintry Night” by Ruth Graham Bell which is a great way to lead up to Christmas.
This is our first year to do something for Advent. We’re doing Ann Voskamps Jesse Tree. I’m really looking forward to this. Especially to sit down as a family to do it. And my little girl is very excited about the ornaments.
Focus on the Family’s website has a lot of great suggestions as well as an “Advent Calendar” that has Scripture suggestions, discussion topics, and fun family activities for each day of Advent. We started tonight (4 days in 1), since I’m running a little behind…
but my boys (ages 3, 5, & 7) really enjoyed it and were in tune with it too! 
We are using a hands on book for then kids. They make ornaments each day as they got through the story of Christs birth. It was 5$ online for the e- book go to www.truthinthetinsel.com
We did Ann Voskamp’s Jesse Tree for the past two years and loved it! But this year we decided to try Truth in the Tinsel to switch things up a bit. http://crayonwishesandpopsicledreams.com/truth-in-the-tinsel-an-advent-experience-for-little-hands/
And since this is the last year that I’ll have all my kiddos home with me (at least in the afternoons), we are going to make the most of it and pair a kindness/giving activity along with a fun activity from our Advent boxes!
http://crayonwishesandpopsicledreams.com/30-days-of-kindness-wrap-up/
I am unable to figure out how to get the printables for the Jesse Tree Book and ornaments. It seems I have done it all right, but I cannot seem to get to it. Any help would be great!
you have to add her blog to your rss feed in order to see the link to download the book. hope this helps!
I love the advent chain idea!
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